Less trouble than blocking a road, and if they did that would be a long running news story ‘the sixteen people arrested for cleaning a train station…’ it’s an attention grabber.
The idea makes a lot of sense in the principal of satyagraha, like Gandhi’s salt march - creating a scene to force them to respond and show their true colours. What politican is going to speak against a movement like that? Especially if the cleaning protests have popular support because they’ve been done respectfully and with great care. It gives the politicans that support green measures a far better position to express their opinions ‘people care about the planet so much they’re willing to risk jail just to clean a train station and try to get people away from cars, it’s our duty as legislators…’ it’s already a powerful speech.
I daydream for hours about different ways it could work, the most important thing is that commuters aren’t disadvantaged or annoyed by it - I’d have small cleaning teams with a member tasked with making sure the team is out the way and I’d make sure they all know the station so they can direct people, help with their bags, etc. The other important thing would be that there are people able to engage in friendly conversation about important issues, why public transport is so important and what other things are important… directing them to prepared resources and climate news, even better if they can make it fun for the people using the trains - something to talk about and almost crow over with their car driving colleagues ‘the journey in was great, station looks amazing and while we waited they were doing a funny puppet show explaining the situation with shell poisoning the Niger Delta… How was traffic?’
I really do think it would be a far better way of spreading the message than throwing paint at much loved artworks or ruining people’s cycle races. Those are so easy to ignore and make conversation hard but something like this or other acts of radical and revolutionary altruism could really get people thinking.
Less trouble than blocking a road, and if they did that would be a long running news story ‘the sixteen people arrested for cleaning a train station…’ it’s an attention grabber.
The idea makes a lot of sense in the principal of satyagraha, like Gandhi’s salt march - creating a scene to force them to respond and show their true colours. What politican is going to speak against a movement like that? Especially if the cleaning protests have popular support because they’ve been done respectfully and with great care. It gives the politicans that support green measures a far better position to express their opinions ‘people care about the planet so much they’re willing to risk jail just to clean a train station and try to get people away from cars, it’s our duty as legislators…’ it’s already a powerful speech.
I daydream for hours about different ways it could work, the most important thing is that commuters aren’t disadvantaged or annoyed by it - I’d have small cleaning teams with a member tasked with making sure the team is out the way and I’d make sure they all know the station so they can direct people, help with their bags, etc. The other important thing would be that there are people able to engage in friendly conversation about important issues, why public transport is so important and what other things are important… directing them to prepared resources and climate news, even better if they can make it fun for the people using the trains - something to talk about and almost crow over with their car driving colleagues ‘the journey in was great, station looks amazing and while we waited they were doing a funny puppet show explaining the situation with shell poisoning the Niger Delta… How was traffic?’
I really do think it would be a far better way of spreading the message than throwing paint at much loved artworks or ruining people’s cycle races. Those are so easy to ignore and make conversation hard but something like this or other acts of radical and revolutionary altruism could really get people thinking.